Industry News

The future of chat apps is group-centric: here’s why

Guest writer Spencer Ng recently sent us an article asking, “Is the market for mobile chat apps saturated?” The advice he gave to messaging…

Money grabbers giving zero guidance: avoid being burnt by your digital agency

When something seems too good to be true, it normally is. Sadly this age-old adage applies to far too many digital communication “agencies” lurking…

Microsoft’s Nokia, Galaxy Gear, Yahoo!’s meh logo: #StuffToKnow on the web

It’s been a pretty big week in tech: Microsoft bought Nokia for US$7.2-billion in a bid to increase its tiny slice of the global…

Judge hands down punishment in Apple ebook case

The judge in Apple’s long-running ebook price-fixing trial has handed down the punishment Apple will receive after losing the case back in August. On…

Huawei is building a platform for Chinese companies to expand globally

Huawei is mostly known for providing telecom equipment to telecommunication companies. But in recent years, it has also started to become active in the…

Moneyweb set to do legal battle with Fin 24 over plagiarism allegations

South African financial site Moneyweb is taking Fin 24, part of Nasper’s 24.com stable, to court over alleged plagiarism, copyright infringement and unfair competition….

Vint Cerf: an open, unregulated internet is vital to our future

An open internet, uninhibited by regulation, is fundamental to its use as a tool for economic growth. That was the message from internet pioneer…

The state of the blogosphere

According to Dave Sifry on the Technorati blog (the blog search engine) the blogosphere is literally DOUBLING every 5,5 months. There are about 40,7 million blogs around today, so that means if this formula is to be followed that there will be 80-million blogs by the end of 2006. What’s more is that a blog is being posted EVERY SECOND on the world wide web. There are about 50 000 blog posts every hour and 1,2-million legitimate posts per day. Now that is alot of content and alot of blogging.

When’s Technorati listing? I want to buy some shares.

Technorati founder David Sifry appeals for sanity

Technorati founder David Sifry appealed to the We Media conference in London at Reuters to put the blogger versus big media issue “to rest”. He says we need each other! Bloggers need big media and big media needs bloggers.

Nitin Desai from UN wants a combined, killer new media and old media combination

Nitin Desai, Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, had a few original words to say on the new wave of “We Media” sweeping the globe. He says that the key challenge – and this is the original part of what he said – is that we face a challenge in finding a business model that can combine the professionalism of the traditional, established media (fact checking; sources; trained journalists; ethics codes and training etc etc) with what we have on the web – the power of collaborative communities, citizen journalism, blogs, collective intelligence, number power etc etc…

Blogs vs traditional media: the Iraq issue

During the first panel discussion of the We Media conference in London a delegate at the conference whose name I didn’t catch stood up and made a very interesting comment. He says he works for a newspaper and that it was his job to review Iraqi blogs for the paper he works for to source stories and comment. He said that ever since he started doing this, he began “losing trust in newspapers” …

Hats off to Media24’s tabloids

Blogging the African Leadership Conference in Kenya, Nairobi

Ingo Capraro, Editor of the relatively new tabloid, Die Son in South Africa gave us a talk on the successes of the paper. Die Son is part of the powerful Media24/Naspers group – the biggest media player in Africa.

Die Son editor gave us a presentation on the newspaper’s successes. It is a tabloid unashamedly covering sex, scandal and has its own page three girl. There was a fair amount of criticism about what the paper was doing. Not sure what the fuss is about.

Who’s running the show at newspapers?

Blogging the African Leadership Conference in Kenya, Nairobi

Dr Peter Mwesige, Acting Head, Mass Communication Department, Makerere University and Former Executive Editor Monitor Publications in Uganda delivered an interesting speech on “African quality journalism”. He emphasised that if we treat the media “like any other business”, we distort the principles of journalism. He noted that there obviously needs to be a healthy mix with regards to the drive for profitability and good journalism, but that the drive for profitability seems to be affecting the craft of journalism. He’s right.

The blog phenomenon

When Gutenberg invented the printing press, he freed the publishers. But when the World Wide Web was pioneered by Tim Berners-Lee, it was said that the readers were now freed. The age of the internet has given unprecedented power to the reader by creating one of the most democratic and accessible forms of publishing yet – the blog.

The great convergence sideshow

It’s always been cheap and easy to publish on the web. Big professional, online publishers share the same medium as small-time, personal homepages. Online publishers typically publish at a lower cost than newspapers or magazines, making it an affordable option for shoestring publishers and budding entrepreneurs. It’s why they are in the web business in the first place.

Surviving the great dot.con

As Google embraces the stock exchange, many dot.com kids are rubbing their hands with glee at what could signal a return of the good times. Matthew Buckland has been through dot.boom and dot.bomb and spent lots on expensive therapy to forget it all, but here he reminisces.

Shuttleworth returns to the source

Mark Shuttleworth speaks to Matthew Buckland about getting to the source of it all

Open source in SA

Something pretty revolutionary is going down in a dusty patch of Limpopo province. It involves billionaire and Africa’s first Astronaut Mark Shuttleworth, a multi-national technology company and the government.

The internet goes from free to fee

If only the internet had been invented by a businessman. It’s a common lament of internet publishers who are buckling and wheezing under the financial strain of running unprofitable websites

Dotcom dating dollars

When the internet arrived, people screamed let’s make lots of money. This new, interactive medium had the ability to deliver content to audiences in innovative ways and make money at the same time. Content would suck readers in, went the theory, and communities would form around these content genres. E-commerce areas would then be built around relevant content and wham bam thank you Ram, your community interacts and you have dotcom dollars.

War of the web

As United States and British forces push through Iraq towards Baghdad, another kind of war is in progress: a battle between TV, radio, newspapers and websites to be the first to bring their audience breaking news on Iraq.

Netocracy

If Karl Marx were alive today this is the book he would have written. This is the bold, if not slightly ambitious, claim of…

GPT 5.2 lands in the API and could reshape how SA builds with AI

Innovate47 Launches Global Food & Agri Accelerator to Back Climate-Smart Startups

Simbi Wabote’s 10-Year Roadmap: How Nigeria Achieved 54% Local Content Growth

Records Tumble In Best Year Yet For South Africa’s Hedge Fund Industry

HONOR’s customer first strategy is reshaping South Africa’s smartphone market

GTA 6 Is Officially Coming in 2026: The New Date, the Delays and the South African Reality Check

The Gaming Gear South Africans Are Actually Buying This December

Omoda C5 X review

TDK enhances IMUs for extreme temps

Data centres and defence are reviving diesel